Migration from Proteus to MLS protocol

There has been a protocol change in Wire. In the future, you will no longer use the Proteus protocol to encrypt all your messages and calls but the Messaging Layer Security protocol.

What is MLS?

The main aim of the messaging layer security protocol is to make encrypted message exchanges and calls in large groups more efficient and secure. In addition, MLS will ease the federation with the cloud version.

MLS is the first global open standard for end-to-end encrypted communication. Wire has developed this standard in cooperation with industry peers and academic institutions over the last few years.

How do I migrate from Proteus to MLS protocol?

The changeover takes place in the background and you will hardly notice it. However, please make sure that your Wire app is up to date.

Start of the changeover

First, you'll notice that one-to-one conversations are transforming into MLS conversations.

When you create a new group or channel it will be a group with the MLS protocol. When you invite people to those new groups who do not use MLS yet you will see this error message: Sophie Aalborg could not be added to the group.

Please inform those team tembers or people from other team who already use MLS to update their devices.

Transferrring group conversations

Wire informs you in every group conversation about the start of the changeover of the protocol to MLS using a system message:

The standard messaging protocol is changing from Proeteus to the new Messaging Layer Security (MLS)/ Ensure you use the latest version of Wire to be ready for MLS and continue communicating seamlessly.

End of the changeover

Wire informs you about the completion of the changeover in every conversation:

This conversation now uses the new Messaging Layer Security (MLS) protocol. To communicate seamlessly, always use the latest version of Wire on your devices.

MLS FAQs

• What is MLS?
  • Please read this article 

• What do I need to migrate to MLS fully?
  • Create a backup 
  • Update all active devices to the latest version of the app and remove all inactive devices

• I can’t create a group. It shows that some of my devices are still using the Proteus protocol.
  • Contact potential group participants and ask them to follow the steps:
    • Create a backup 
    • Remove any devices that are not using MLS by going to Manage devices  OR log in and update to MLS
    • Restore backup (if necessary)

• What happens if one of my contacts is still using Proteus?
  • Ask them to migrate to MLS fully. Otherwise, they can't join groups.

• Why are some of my messages not showing?
  • It’s possible that your contact hasn’t fully migrated yet.

• What about the key fingerprints? Are there any changes to this procedure?
  • You can also compare your MLS thumbprints, but there is no button to verify like for Proteus